with gunshots going off. and the trauma this entire ordeal is leaving on such young children. their parents and a nation wishing to wipe away the pain. welcome to the lead. i m pamela brown in for jake tapper. we start today with an absolutely devastating admission about the school shooting in uvalde, texas. for the benefit of hindsight, where i m sitting now, of course, it was not the right decision. it was the wrong decision, period. that statement coming from the thead of the texas departmet of safety. he said officers on the scene should have breached the classroom door immediately. he said the commander on scene decided no more children were at risk. and they allowed the shooter to stay inside the classroom for more than an hour, despite the fact that kids inside the room were calling 911 and begging for police to help. what efforts were the officers making to try and break through either that door or another door to get inside that classroom? none at that
so again, the onestarfoundation.org/uvalde. you can do your part to help out the people in this community that are suffering in incalculable ways. in addition to that, we have set up a central headquarters for victim assistance services at the family assistance center, located at the uvalde county fair plex, as we ll discuss momentarily, there may be a relocation of that site and we ll keep everybody fully informed about where the relocation site will be. every family impacted by the shooting has been assigned an advocate to help them with their needs. among other things, there will be air fare, for example, whether it be through united airlines or jetblue airlines that will provide victims families with flights free of charge so they can get here and be with their family members. the family assistance center will cover the travel and lodging costs of families who
and there s thoughts at a 15-year-old no one should have to go through, especially these elementary students. what they re going through is unimaginable. sadly, i have some insight. and it s just incredibly disappointing, really difficult after going through a shooting, no one ever should go through that. especially at school, where we re supposed to be learning. it s just their innocence was stripped away and i know how they feel. i m heartbroken for them. what is your advice to them? i think my advice is, you know, since they re young, to try to process it now. i have learned that if you wait and then try to figure out what just happened at my school, how did i lose my friends, my classmates and teachers, it gets harder and harder after each year goes by. hopefully those students will have the help and be table try to connect their emotions to what just happened. because like i said, as more and
coughlin. i m sure this is so tough for you in many ways. we want to hear about how this makes you feel after everything you went through and then hearing what this child experienced. yeah, just devastating. it s hard not to cry, especially listening to that experience. and after four years since parkland and then this still happening, and for me to see the videos of police running into the school, it just brings back a lot of memories. and it s retraumatizing. it s already too late to act, but this time, we really need to do something before it happens again. i think we can all agree with that. we never want to see this again. what were those early days like for you after the shooting at your school? yeah, it was really difficult to process, honestly. i was confused, i was heartbroken. i remember trying to figure out which friend of mine passed away, which teacher was okay.
more youth are going through this, it s just there s no words. and especially as someone who has gone through it. and you know, hopefully their families are there for them. families across the country are also facing some very tough conversations about what happened in uvalde. would you recommend parents initiate those talks or wait for the child to come to them with questions? of course, in some cases, they don t have that choice because the kids learn about it at school or from their friends. but what would you advise? yeah, i think it just depends on the child and on the parent. you know, if the student is willing to talk about it, i think it s important. but if they need time, they need time. each person, i learned, especially at such a big school like marjory stoneman douglas, different people process it different ways. it really depends on the students. even having this conversation, oh, how should we tell students to process a shooting? that should not be a